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Investigating the need of triggering the acquisition for infant diffusion MRI: a quantitative study including
Lajos R Kozák1, Szabolcs Dávid, Gábor Rudas
1MR Research Center, Semmelweis University, Budapest, Hungary. lkozak@mrkk.sote.hu
Neuroimage
|December 19, 2012
Summary
Cardiac triggering is essential for reducing data variability in diffusion MRI for infants and adults. This technique minimizes image artifacts, ensuring more accurate diffusion tensor imaging results in pediatric subjects.
Area of Science:
- Medical Imaging
- Neuroscience
- Pediatric Radiology
Background:
- Diffusion weighted magnetic resonance imaging (DW-MRI) is crucial for assessing brain development in neonates and young children.
- Acquiring high-quality DW-MRI data in pediatric populations presents challenges due to physiological motion, particularly cardiac pulsation.
- Understanding the impact of cardiac motion on diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) metrics is vital for reliable clinical interpretation.
Purpose of the Study:
- To determine if cardiac triggering is necessary to minimize data variability in diffusion (tensor) imaging for neonatal and pediatric subjects.
- To evaluate the effects of pulsation artifacts on diffusion tensor (DT) fitting when cardiac triggering is not employed.
- To assess the feasibility of implementing triggered data acquisition in neonates and young children.
Main Methods:
- Diffusion encoding was performed along the z-gradient direction with and without cardiac triggering in 11 infants and 7 adults.
- Non-parametric bootstrap statistical methods were used to analyze the variance dependence on cardiac triggering.
- Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) data were acquired with and without triggering in a subset of infants for direct comparison.
Main Results:
- Significantly increased data variability was observed without cardiac triggering in both infants and adults.
- In infants, this increased variability led to erroneous fractional anisotropy values and artifactual fiber direction estimates.
- Pulsation artifacts affected a larger brain area in infants compared to adults, contrary to some previous reports.
Conclusions:
- Cardiac triggering is feasible and highly recommended for diffusion MRI acquisition in young subjects.
- Implementing cardiac triggering minimizes erroneous estimations caused by image artifacts, leading to more specific and unambiguous interpretations.
- While requiring additional setup, triggered acquisition can result in shorter overall imaging times compared to acquiring multiple un-triggered datasets.
